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Tectonic Map of China and Mongolia, 1974. Showing Korea and the sea to the east

In Shakespeare’s play, Juliet asks Romeo,

“What’s in a name? that which we call a rose

By any other name would smell as sweet.”

But what about that place on the map? Place names are often contested. For example, the Persian Gulf is a name that has been in use for a long time. Arabian Gulf is a relatively new name for the same place, that some Iranians object to.

Map makers, who do not wish to make a political statement with their cartography, will often go out of their way to make the map so that the name or boundary is not included, or is not legible, to stay out of the conflict. When the issue came to our attention, we dug back into the Map Vault at Williams & Heintz to see if we could find any older map, to see what was on it. Sure enough, this Tectonic Map of China and Mongolia, that we printed for the Geological Society of America, in 1974 has the name of the sea conveniently omitted.

Now, I firmly believe that some old place names are better changed: place names that are racist, or sexist would smell much sweeter without an offensive name. My view of political names is, “a rose would smell as sweet.”